VoIP News: July 2008

Wireless broadband is expected to create significant opportunities for revenue growth, according to a report by telecoms advisers Analysys Mason. Around $784 billion in service revenue will be created by 2. 1 billion wireless broadband users worldwide by 2015, the company predicts.

Using VoIP when abroad has been recommended by a writer for the Wall Street Journal. Brett Arends writes that being able to use a mobile when abroad is "invaluable", but that the price of doing so can end up being "cripplingly expensive". To get round this, he recommends setting up a VoIP account while at home then buying a cheap mobile in the country being visited (or getting a SIM for a currently-owned mobile, but this requires the mobile to work in the country).

Fife Council's decision to adopt VoIP phones has meant 60 staff are able to continue working after a fire at their headquarters. Despite the fire being restricted to one room, IT systems were affected which meant Catering & Cleaning and Procurement & Supplies staff were left with no telephone or computer access and had to be relocated. However, because of the VoIP phones versatility, it was a simple procedure to transfer all the operations to separate buildings, and employees could use their extension numbers to log into other council telephones.

More than 30 TOHO cinemas in Japan have installed a VoIP solution using Asterisk hardware. TOHO wanted extensions for VoIP phones in each cinema's screening room integrated with the existing PBX in the theatre, while networking all the theatres together. This VoIP solution was achieved with Asterisk hardware, specifically an Asterisk IP telephone server.

By 2012 a quarter of households worldwide will have a broadband connection, according to Gartner. The number of connections will grow from 323 million last year to 499 million by 2012 which is a jump from 18 to 25 per cent of worldwide households, the analysts predict. Canada, Holland, Switzerland, South Korea and Hong Kong are the only countries with 60 per cent home broadband penetration currently and these countries are expected to remain leaders by 2012, although countries like the UK and the USA will be moving closer by then.